Graham: Beck ‘doesn’t represent the Republican Party’

Sen. Lindsey Graham tried again to put some distance between his party and controversial Fox News host Glenn Beck on Sunday, telling Fox’s Bret Baier that Beck “doesn’t represent the Republican Party.”

Graham (R-SC) was responding to a question about his comments last week that Beck was exploiting a “market for cynicism.”

“Are you saying that Glenn Beck is bad for America?” Baier asked Graham.

“I’m not saying he’s bad for America,” Graham responded. “You’ve got the freedom to watch him if you choose. What I am saying [is] he doesn’t represent the Republican Party.”

Last week at the Washington Ideas Forum, Graham said that “Glenn Beck is not aligned with any party. He is aligned with cynicism and there has always been a market for cynics. But we became a great nation not because we are a nation of cynics. We became a great nation because we are a nation of believers.”

“Only in America can you make that much money crying,” Graham said.

The senator also took on the “birther” movement in that speech, saying the Republican must declare as “crazy” the notion President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. In an oddly phrased assertion, the South Carolina senator said that President Obama is “not a Muslim. He’s a good man.”

On Fox News Sunday, Graham said of Beck: “At the end of the day, when a person says he represents conservatism and that the country’s better off with Barack Obama than John McCain,” Graham continued. “That sort of ends the debate for me as to how much more I’m going to listen.”